Dancing Videos

Can you tell I charged the battery for the camera with video?

Here's how Mary woke up this morning (I'm not kidding - she was doing this when I walked into their room):



Despite the fact that Catherine was up most of the night coughing and complaining that "the boogers are stopping my breathing", she felt well enough this morning to go completely nuts for about 15 minutes with song-writing and ballerina dancing.



This somehow devolved into a kind of two-step:

Violins and Somersaults

Don't worry, I wasn't actually letting Catherine do somersaults while playing violin. I just happen to have these two videos for you.

Violin practice:



Somersaults (Catherine's favorite part of tumbling class):

Random Videos

Here are a couple "typical day in the lives of Catherine and Mary" videos.

Earrings. Phone calls. Twirling. Falling (she was fine, by the way). All daily staples.



Building paths. Jumping. Mary trying to do whatever Catherine is doing. All happens everyday.



And Mary running around yelling "bunny running Mama! bunny running!" That happens a lot too. Especially during dinner, a meal she hasn't eaten in ages.

Shopping Helper

This is how our shopping trip at BJs went today:



For some reason when I told Catherine it was time to go shopping it just occurred to her that she should bring her own shopping cart. I couldn't really think of a good reason why she shouldn't, so she did. And she pushed it the whole time without getting tired or leaving it in the middle of an aisle.

Even though she was very good and listened and kept her cart right with mine the whole time, she of course caused a bit of commotion in the store simply by her utter cuteness. Plus I think the other kids we ran into were jealous.


Do you think I'm stuck hauling this cart with us every time we go to the store now? Oh well - it was hilarious, and worth it.

An Empty Room

Some bold planning, a couple lucky invitations, a fortuitous connection or two, and a bit of Providence, have resulted in Aunt Kristin and Uncle Brian making their move to the big city a little earlier than planned. As in, this morning.


This room echoes now.

The girls are having fun stomping around in there and yelling, taking full advantage of the acoustics, but not as much fun as they had playing on Aunt Kristin's bed for tickle time or helping Uncle Brian paint or assisting with Christopher's diaper changes.

Although we had to say farewell to our housemates sooner than we wanted and will miss having them in our day-to-day lives, it is good news for Kristin and Brian and their future in New York. And we'll soon have plenty to distract us from their absence - only five weeks until baby Michael arrives!

This is Not Fluffy Snow

Some time ago when we got a foot of snow, Catherine was very distraught because it happened to be the light fluffy kind that could not ever have any hope of supporting a snowman. She desperately wanted to make a snowman, but eventually accepted the fact that fluffy snow is no good for snowmen.

This last snow we got was just a few inches, and there was a lot of rain mixed in, so it was pretty much ice. It is very difficult to mold ice into a snowman (without a chainsaw at least). We called this "crunchy snow". Crunchy snow is also no good for snowmen.

Luckily, today the sun was out for a while and it was just warm enough to soften the snow into snowman building material. Finally, we had it: sticky snow.

Catherine and Mary had a very fun time delivering snow and patting it down, and we had a snowman accessory kit waiting in the wings.

Patting down the sticky snow - Catherine was pretty excited and kept telling me "this is not fluffy snow!"


We decided on a two-tiered snowman. We wouldn't have lasted outside long enough for a third level.


A snow delivery from Mary. It takes a while to build a snowman three flakes at a time.


The final results - not bad for their first snowman!

All Grown Up

How many times during the lives of each of our kids (and this blog) do you think I will write a post with this title?


But that's how it seems - I think Catherine grew up several years in the last couple weeks. (caution: underpants are involved in some of the story below).

Catherine decided it is time she learned her letters. She traces them very well and has started making some on her own. She always starts at the bottom right corner of a page and works her way backwards.

She also decided showers are better than baths. She will only take a bath in order to entertain Mary. Otherwise, it's showers for her.

And she has apparently potty trained herself in the last seven days. This is how potty training has gone for us. Many many many months ago, we figured Catherine was physically and mentally capable of using a toilet (she was nearly changing her own diaper at that point) so we stocked up on potty books and potty charts and potty treats and pull-ups. And Catherine pretty much wanted nothing to do with it. She would get excited for a couple minutes or a couple hours and do what she could to snag stickers and jelly beans, but most of the time if you asked her what she wanted to wear she would prefer a diaper over a pull-up, and underpants were pretty much no motivation.

This went on for a while. It turns out we might have been stressing her out to the point of her losing her hair (this is not 100% certain, but I have to say, it seems an inherent risk of being the oldest. We really do learn stuff along the way that we didn't know with the first one. My apologies to oldest children everywhere.).

So a few months ago I dropped it altogether and let her do what she wanted: wear diapers.

Then a couple weeks ago Catherine started asking me to change her diaper constantly - I think every time it was wet. So I casually hinted that there was a way to keep her diaper dry if she didn't like it being wet, to which she responded, "Mom, I don't want to talk about that right now." I can take a hint. I let it go.

Then a week ago I went to give her a dry diaper when she woke up and she threw a big fit because she "wanted to practice with underpants." So I suggested we get out a stack of pull-ups and practice keeping those dry first and she would have nothing of it. She wanted underpants. We were going to be home all day, so I said sure, wear underpants.

She went through seven outfits that day.

But every time we were stripping off wet clothes she asked if she could try again, and I smiled and did my very best to remove all audible irritation from my voice (because doing extra laundry and cleaning up puddles is not my favorite thing to have scheduled) and said "of course you can try again!". By the end of the day, she made it to the potty once.

The next day she made it to the potty a few times, and the day after that, she made it more often than not, with a lot of reminding.

Today, her third completely dry day, was almost entirely her own doing - nary a reminder from me. And there have been a couple dry nights mixed in this week as well. And she keeps asking to wear underpants at night. At this point, I feel pretty secure in thinking she won't be going back to diapers.

The moral of the potty training story: Catherine does what she wants. When she's ready.

oh the life of the oldest child

And I guess when she turned three she decided she's ready to do all kinds of things. Today, I looked over from my desk when I heard the water in the kitchen sink start running. Catherine had moved a stool from her room, plugged the drain, squirted in some soap, grabbed a rag, turned on the water, and started doing dishes.




Later she took it upon herself to get Mary ready to go outside in the snow, and then to work on clearing the snow from the driveway like Daddy.



She tried to talk Mary into helping her, but Mary just wanted to run around the yard. Eventually Catherine decided she had done her duty with the driveway and joined in the playing. There's not much more a couple toddlers can do in frozen-solid snow than make footprints.


And throw the occasional "snowball" (otherwise known as giant ice chunks accumulated from shoveling the sidewalk).


Luckily for me, Catherine also spent a significant portion of the day jumping like a frog, twirling in her princess ballerina tutu, whining for attention, and demanding that Daddy throw her up in the air. If not for these delightful toddler antics, I might be sitting here at the computer researching colleges for her to go off to next year.

The Little Princess

I'm sure I will find hundreds of things with which to be completely smitten when there is a baby boy in the house, but for now, what could be cuter than this?

Daddy's Job

The girls already find it completely hilarious to beat up on their Dad. Anytime he lies down on the floor to play with them, they eventually start going to the opposite end of the house so they can get a really good running start and jump on his stomach. Seriously, it's fun.



To avoid the crash landing on his stomach, Daddy started picking up Catherine in the air as she jumped, and wouldn't let her go until she said who was the strongest. She caught on to this very quickly, and found it to be a delightful variation to her original game.

The Tea Party

It's cold here, and all the adults in the house drink a lot of tea. That combined with the existence of Catherine's special tea set is enough to inspire a lot of toddler tea parties.

Catherine is always the hostess, and helps me brew the tea, and keeps everyone's cups full (very full).


I think Mary isn't quite sure about the actual taste of the tea - she pretends to drink a lot more than she actually drinks.



But she still enjoys a good tea party.


If I left it completely up to them, I think we would have several a day.

The Lullaby

It's been a while since we had some videos - I never have that camera in my hands anymore!

This is from a couple weeks ago when Catherine was opening a birthday present that came in the mail.

Apparently the singing cards are just as delightful as they were when she turned one.



I don't really look forward to the day when she starts reacting to opening presents the way she thinks she is supposed to react - this is much more fun.



Once she saw what it did, by the way, she was much less skeptical.

And this is the girls singing a lullaby to their baby dolls. I don't know about you, but I'd be asleep in seconds...

Budding Photographer

I was going to post some videos but they were taking much too long to load so you'll have to wait until tomorrow. Instead here are some pictures Catherine took today:





Judging by the foot in this picture, I think Mary had gotten a hold of the camera by this time:

A Long Two Days

We all made it. I made it to New Jersey and back, stopping in Manhattan each way to drop off and pick up Kristin and Brian, without getting lost once. I made it two days in the office even though I pretty much completely lost my voice the first morning and still had to conduct training for two days. The girls made it two bed times and two wake-ups without me (and apparently barely even noticed). Michael made it two nights sleeping with coughing children. Grandma and Grandpa made it two whole days solely entertaining two toddlers. Kristin and Brian made it two days trekking though the big city with a sick and cranky Christopher who was not at all impressed with the compact umbrella stroller.

So my first time leaving the girls overnight, and everybody is fine. Actually it appears they had a rather good time. And we can now return to our regularly scheduled, picture-laden blog posts (as soon as I take some pictures). Until then be sure to pop over to Ramblings by Steve to see what the girls were up to while I was away.